New electric truck drives City Fresh's upcoming season
City Fresh, based in Oberlin and with 16 delivery locations around Cleveland, has gotten a new and larger delivery vehicle it hopes will help expand its service and its mission of sustainability. City Fresh's new electric truck, a step van similar to the type used by UPS and other delivery services, has been purchased by California's Motiv Electric Trucks for $203,000, which is being reimbursed by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency from its VW Diesel Mitigation Trust Fund. The truck is larger than the organization's previous model and has a range of 200 miles. The funding includes grants from Cuyahoga County, the Nord and Gund foundations, and the Green Edge Fund at Oberlin College. City Fresh, which served 1,500 people last year with its subscription service for produce, plans to use the new truck to grow its program. The organization's food is delivered fresh from local farmers and uses regenerative methods to avoid wasting food by transporting it to farmer’s markets.
Pubblicato : 11 mesi fa di Dan Shingler in Auto
The truck is a step van similar to the type used by UPS and other delivery services.
It was made by California’s Motiv Electric Trucks. At 29 feet, it’s longer than a standard UPS truck and has a range of 200 miles – more than enough to meet City Fresh’s needs, Mauser-Martinez said. It’s also much larger than the traditional delivery truck the organization had been using.
The new truck cost $203,000, but about 60% of that is being reimbursed by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency from its VW Diesel Mitigation Trust Fund. Ohio received about $75 million via a 2016 federal government settlement with Volkswagen over its diesel emissions cheating scandal, and the state has been issuing millions of dollars in grants from the fund annually ever since.
In addition, Mauser-Martinez said City Fresh received grants from Cuyahoga County, the Nord and Gund foundations, and the Green Edge Fund at Oberlin College to help pay for the truck.
Now she hopes to use it to grow her program, which she said served 1,500 people last year with its subscription service for produce. City Fresh, unlike many CSAs, allows customers to go week-to-week if they prefer.
The program has tiered pricing based on income, with one level of pricing for people who don’t need a discount, a lower price for people with incomes at 200% of the poverty level or less, and a lower price still for customers on SNAP, commonly known as food stamps.
A single person can get a week’s worth of fruit and vegetables for between $11 and $22 under the pricing system, while a family pays between $22 and $35 a week, Mauser-Martinez said.
The service helps people in areas where there’s a shortage of grocers and other fresh produce providers and saves participating farmers, who are often Amish, from having to transport food to farmer’s markets and potentially wasting what they don’t sell in the process.
City Fresh also gets produce from a 10-acre farm in Oberlin, where it just began training aspiring new farmers.
“We have five farmers in our first cohort, all women,” she said.
The truck is in keeping with the group’s overall ethos, which it also applies to its food.
“It’s all local," Mauser-Martinez said. “We’re committed to sustainability. Our farmers are using regenerative methods (such as low- or no-till cultivation and soil remediation) and it's low-impact agricultural.”
Mauser-Martinez said her organization’s produce is some of the freshest available and is brought to customers within days of being harvested. That's why she might not have any strawberries this year, though dozens of other crops are set to be delivered as usual.
Normally, June 18 would be a fine time to pick or sell fresh local strawberries, but this year’s weather was unusual.
“We had a very warm spring, so unfortunately it doesn’t look like there will be any strawberries left,” Mauser-Martinez said.
Temi: Green Energy, Electric Vehicles